To achieve personal and financial objectives, individuals often seek a relationship with a financial advisor. Financial advisors typically establish one-to-one relationships with many financial planning clients, regularly consulting with each of the clients to help each client achieve their stated objectives. Financial planners often use computer systems to assist with the financial planning process.
Current financial planning computing systems embed goals and recommendations suggested by a financial planner and accepted by the client in a computer system that the financial planner uses to create the goals and recommendations. However, the embedded goals in a particular computer system may limit the use of more than one analytical tool (e.g. a software financial analysis program on a different computer system), since different analytical tools often have different native data formats. Financial planners often use more than one computer system or computer software program, and each system or program may require the user to input goals and recommendations. In this scenario, a financial planner may need to reconcile the results from using each of the different systems in order to present a summary to their client. In addition, the outputs of the various computer systems may not be easily reconcilable, due to data format differences. Furthermore, many tools create and analyze goals and recommendations based on certain events (e.g., a stock market downturn, an inheritance, or a compensation bonus). The association between the goals and recommendations and particular events may restrict the use of the goals and recommendations in other contexts.